Curve Payment Processing Update - 5th March

For continued updates on our payment processing, check out our Status Page HERE.

As many Curve users will now be aware, today we experienced a payment processing outage, meaning that payments with the Curve card have not worked since 10AM this morning. We know many of our users rely on their Curve card at home and across the world, and we are deeply sorry for letting you down. We want to fully explain why it happened and the steps we're taking to ensure that such issues do not occur again.

The Curve Platform sits between your bank and Mastercard®. So at point of purchase, your transaction goes through a few steps before reaching your bank: first it will go through Mastercard then through a payment processor, then us, and then to your bank, at which point you’ll have paid for your purchase. Curve's technology normally allows this to happen within a couple of seconds - all while you're stood at the till - though to do so we currently need a number of partners to perform some tasks in the process.

We’re always working to ensure a seamless and reliable experience for you when using Curve - from paying, to keeping up-to-date on your budgets in the app. The last time we had an outage on a similar scale was over 6 months ago - it lasted for an hour. As a result, we started working on something called a ‘stand-in process’, which would allow for your transactions to be approved under similar extreme circumstances. After the experience today, we’re going to increase resources on these projects so we can protect our users from situations like this in the future.

Now to get on to what else we’re doing to make this better for you going forward:

(1) We’ve set up a Curve Status Page so that you can stay up-to-date with our current status round the clock. You can find it at the top of this page.

(2) We’ll be in touch with further updates as we learn more about the outage today, so that we can continue to build our platform to be even more secure.

(3) If you’ve been affected by today’s outage, rest assured that you’ll be compensated for any inconvenience caused.

We have also been working round the clock to help those affected where possible - from paying for lunches, to reimbursing FX fees and bank’s cash advance fees.

We’ll continue to work on resolving the issues - working reactively to address the issue with our processing partner, and proactively to ensure that we provide the best experience for you in the meantime. Please do check our Twitter or Status Page for updates, or with our Support team here if we can assist you in any way.

From all at Team Curve, we thank you for your continued support and patience.

Curve is the trading name of Curve 1 Limited, a UK registered Company (No. 9523903).Mastercard is a registered trademark of Mastercard International Incorporated. The card is issued by Wirecard Card Solution Ltd (WDCS) pursuant to license by Mastercard International Inc. WDCS is authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority to conduct electronic money service activities under the Electronic Money Regulations 2011 (Ref: 900051)